OOC: Things to remember about Ironhide, part 1
1. He's old. He's damn old. I'm using a tentative date of around four million Earth years, but the exact number doesn't matter at this point- he's just really damn old. This makes talking to organics interesting; their lifespans, to him, are a little bit horrifying. Humans practically blink in and out of existence, by comparison. They're a young species, all right. He's been online for longer than they've walked upright. Hell, he's older than genus Homo- the most advanced apes on the planet were Australopithecus when he was being constructed.
2. He's tough. Not that he can't be hurt- he can, and quite often has, both in and out of the events of the movie- but it's hard to make it really count, and even when he's down he's capable to some degree of re-routing a lot of functions around the damage so that he can keep on going until it's been fixed. This is not always good for him, but he doesn't always care. If it needs doing he'll do it and take the consequences later.
3. As a function of both of the above, he's done a lot of outliving. He's seen organic species rise to civilization and fall to barbarism, or wipe themselves out entirely. ("I've seen worlds where there was nothing left but architecture and beetles with dreams of a better tomorrow.") He's also outlived an awful lot of his own people, good mechs and bad. It's mostly a source of pride for him that he's been able to do so, but it's also meant a good deal of sorrow over the years. Every time someone he knew who had outlasted this or that foe, or this or that problem, alongside him goes offline, that's one more friend who's dropped out of the world while he's gone on. Hell, he outlasted his PLANET. As a result, he has an unspoken fear, bordering on an unspoken belief, that ultimately he's going to be the last Transformer in existence someday.
4. He is not a mech of faith. Much of the Primus religion seen in the other continuities existed on Cybertron exists in his continuity, and he uses some of the trappings of it, mostly when he swears- but it's a religion that grew more out of stories and visions from mechs who spent longer in the presence of the Cube than others. It's not something that he thinks was handed down from on high or anything. There is no equivalent to the Beast Wars Covenant of Primus of which he is aware.
5. Despite this, he has always considered the Allspark to be sacred. It may be the only thing in existence which has earned this attitude from him. It brings life into existence where there was not and could not be life before, and whether it is in fact the physical form chosen by an entity of order and light too powerful to comprehend, or whether it's some artifact of a race so ancient that its passing left no known trace except the cube, that's something that he considers holy. He would have fought Megatron and his armies for his own life and freedom if that had been all there was to it, but when it became clear that Megatron wanted to control the Cube and twist it to his own ends, that ended all possibility in Ironhide's mind of Megatron ever being redeemed. You don't DO that to the source of all life. It's too important for that.
It's probably best that he wasn't there when Sector Seven brought Sam and company into its presence.
The day he was made to understand that the Cube had to be destroyed to keep it out of Megatron's hands may have been the worst day of his existence, and that includes the ultimate fall of Cybertron. I can't see that as having been bearable for him. The prospect of destroying every single Decepticon from one end of the planet to the other, and anywhere in the stars they might take refuge, probably occurred to him first. I strongly suspect Optimus knew he was thinking about that, and walked him through the ramifications of that possibility: all the 'cons to be destroyed, yes, but then what? All the other mechs who might develop or harbor similar ambitions in future would have to be put down, too. And if someone on the Autobot side took it into their processors to use the Cube to develop a peace force to hold the line forever against such things, wouldn't that be in the same category as building the army of galactic conquest? Wouldn't building that force with mechs who were incepted with that purpose burned into them be the same as creating slaves, which would be just as abhorrent? Besides, all the while that this was going on, they'd still have to keep the Cube out of would-be Megatrons' hands... It wouldn't make swallowing the need for its destruction any more palatable, but it would at least make it clear to him why it was necessary.
6. As I said, he's not a mech of faith. He's a cynic. Life made him a cynic very early on in his existence. He does, however, have a few items of faith so fundamental that he doesn't even have to think about them: he believes in Optimus, most notably. Not that Optimus is always right, because he's not always right, but he's been right often enough that Ironhide trusts him and has faith that what he does is as close to the right thing as possible. He believes that when a Cybertronian dies, their spark returns to the same source as all others and merges with that source, and ultimately becomes part of every new spark brought online from then on.
The Primus religion never really got much shrift from him before. He never had to put a face on the source of all life and the beginning of all things in order to deal with existence. The thing is that he came to Milliways from a time when his planet was dead and the Created Source (one of several names for the Cube, along with the Allspark) had been destroyed. That kind of thing leaves a lot of room for questions and spark-searching, and could very easily turn a mech to despair. That's a big patch of empty at the heart of existence... and then Unicron showed up.
When you don't particularly believe in Primus, you don't particularly believe in his opposite, either. Being forcibly presented with proof of the Nullspark's existence as its own sentient entity caused some very real changes and realignments in his thinking, of which he is mostly unaware. It'll occur to him eventually. For now all that matters is that in the low-priority processor threads at the very bottom of the queue, the thought is running: if the Nullspark has a face, if the Nullspark is its own being, then why should the Allspark be any different? Its created housing might have been destroyed, but who knows what other form it might take...
More later.
2. He's tough. Not that he can't be hurt- he can, and quite often has, both in and out of the events of the movie- but it's hard to make it really count, and even when he's down he's capable to some degree of re-routing a lot of functions around the damage so that he can keep on going until it's been fixed. This is not always good for him, but he doesn't always care. If it needs doing he'll do it and take the consequences later.
3. As a function of both of the above, he's done a lot of outliving. He's seen organic species rise to civilization and fall to barbarism, or wipe themselves out entirely. ("I've seen worlds where there was nothing left but architecture and beetles with dreams of a better tomorrow.") He's also outlived an awful lot of his own people, good mechs and bad. It's mostly a source of pride for him that he's been able to do so, but it's also meant a good deal of sorrow over the years. Every time someone he knew who had outlasted this or that foe, or this or that problem, alongside him goes offline, that's one more friend who's dropped out of the world while he's gone on. Hell, he outlasted his PLANET. As a result, he has an unspoken fear, bordering on an unspoken belief, that ultimately he's going to be the last Transformer in existence someday.
4. He is not a mech of faith. Much of the Primus religion seen in the other continuities existed on Cybertron exists in his continuity, and he uses some of the trappings of it, mostly when he swears- but it's a religion that grew more out of stories and visions from mechs who spent longer in the presence of the Cube than others. It's not something that he thinks was handed down from on high or anything. There is no equivalent to the Beast Wars Covenant of Primus of which he is aware.
5. Despite this, he has always considered the Allspark to be sacred. It may be the only thing in existence which has earned this attitude from him. It brings life into existence where there was not and could not be life before, and whether it is in fact the physical form chosen by an entity of order and light too powerful to comprehend, or whether it's some artifact of a race so ancient that its passing left no known trace except the cube, that's something that he considers holy. He would have fought Megatron and his armies for his own life and freedom if that had been all there was to it, but when it became clear that Megatron wanted to control the Cube and twist it to his own ends, that ended all possibility in Ironhide's mind of Megatron ever being redeemed. You don't DO that to the source of all life. It's too important for that.
It's probably best that he wasn't there when Sector Seven brought Sam and company into its presence.
The day he was made to understand that the Cube had to be destroyed to keep it out of Megatron's hands may have been the worst day of his existence, and that includes the ultimate fall of Cybertron. I can't see that as having been bearable for him. The prospect of destroying every single Decepticon from one end of the planet to the other, and anywhere in the stars they might take refuge, probably occurred to him first. I strongly suspect Optimus knew he was thinking about that, and walked him through the ramifications of that possibility: all the 'cons to be destroyed, yes, but then what? All the other mechs who might develop or harbor similar ambitions in future would have to be put down, too. And if someone on the Autobot side took it into their processors to use the Cube to develop a peace force to hold the line forever against such things, wouldn't that be in the same category as building the army of galactic conquest? Wouldn't building that force with mechs who were incepted with that purpose burned into them be the same as creating slaves, which would be just as abhorrent? Besides, all the while that this was going on, they'd still have to keep the Cube out of would-be Megatrons' hands... It wouldn't make swallowing the need for its destruction any more palatable, but it would at least make it clear to him why it was necessary.
6. As I said, he's not a mech of faith. He's a cynic. Life made him a cynic very early on in his existence. He does, however, have a few items of faith so fundamental that he doesn't even have to think about them: he believes in Optimus, most notably. Not that Optimus is always right, because he's not always right, but he's been right often enough that Ironhide trusts him and has faith that what he does is as close to the right thing as possible. He believes that when a Cybertronian dies, their spark returns to the same source as all others and merges with that source, and ultimately becomes part of every new spark brought online from then on.
The Primus religion never really got much shrift from him before. He never had to put a face on the source of all life and the beginning of all things in order to deal with existence. The thing is that he came to Milliways from a time when his planet was dead and the Created Source (one of several names for the Cube, along with the Allspark) had been destroyed. That kind of thing leaves a lot of room for questions and spark-searching, and could very easily turn a mech to despair. That's a big patch of empty at the heart of existence... and then Unicron showed up.
When you don't particularly believe in Primus, you don't particularly believe in his opposite, either. Being forcibly presented with proof of the Nullspark's existence as its own sentient entity caused some very real changes and realignments in his thinking, of which he is mostly unaware. It'll occur to him eventually. For now all that matters is that in the low-priority processor threads at the very bottom of the queue, the thought is running: if the Nullspark has a face, if the Nullspark is its own being, then why should the Allspark be any different? Its created housing might have been destroyed, but who knows what other form it might take...
More later.